The Night Singers (3 page)

When he left Clarksdale this year at the end of finals' week, the snow was still four inches thick in his back yard. Arriving in his pretty colonial town, he found the air was crisp, the lilac and crab apple were budding.

He should have called Muriel to say good-bye. He still valued her friendship. She and Marco were the only people he could hang with in Clarksdale. Odd that they were both nurses at County Hospital. How could Muriel be so content in South Dakota? Clearly, they weren't meant to be partners.

Now an elderly man hobbled in—tall, gaunt, hawk nosed, the sort of guy who'd be called Zeke or Booth or Nathaniel on a TV docudrama about New England history.

“You're the fellow!” He actually shook his brass-tipped cane.

Paul didn't know whether to cower or grin.

“My mother taught piano in this village for forty years. I still go to sleep hearing the scales.” He was leaning heavily on the cane now. “She would have
hated
your concert, would have had run you out of town by Uncle Clement, the magistrate, for musical obscenity!”

Paul's blue eyes widened. People in South Dakota didn't have such strong feelings about music. Perhaps Lutherans were just too nice to criticise.

The other studio visitors fell silent.

The woman in the rocker leaned forward.

“But I came to tell you that atonal sonata was one of the most interesting things I've ever heard. Music with
ideas
!”

Paul grinned, tilted back against his oak desk and realised just how tired he felt. Stimulated but exhausted. The post-concert party had gone on for hours last night. Then he'd had to open the studio at 10am. All day, he'd hosted a continual stream of the curious, the confused, the complimentary and the curmudgeonly.

“If I'd known this kind of thing were on the horizon, I'd have continued practicing those scales.”

“What did you do instead?” Paul inquired.

“Law School. Now
I'm
the magistrate.”

Paul chuckled. “Well
my
parents would have approved of
you
.”

“Too late to trade,” the man winked and waved his cane in farewell.

The others laughed politely and then, as if they were all suddenly aware of the 4 o'clock hour, they each thanked Paul and said good-bye.

He leaned on the doorway of his screened-in porch looking down toward the river. Paul loved watching the water, listening to its rumbling currents. Two large blue jays hopped along the branches of a huge hawthorn. The sun had ducked beneath the crown of this giant, its light softly filtered through lacey young needles.

She released a sigh.

Startled, Paul clutched a hand to his chest and pivoted.

“I should be going,” murmured the woman in his rocking chair. “I had a question.” She looked up at the pine ceiling beams. “But you must be tired. I should be going.”

Yes, he wished she would go. He hadn't been alone for three days and he'd looked forward to evening light descending through the trees. Yet there was something compelling about this fragile woman in her smart black pants suit and red scarf. She was younger than Mom, older than he. Maybe halfway in between.

“No, stay.” He found himself perched on the piano bench near “her” chair, bending forward. Waiting. “What's your question?”

“Do you ever write about grief?”

He blinked. Reynolds had advised him that if any visitors got truly weird, to excuse himself and make a phone call. But that's not what was going on here, he understood.

Paul knew enough to ask, “Have you lost someone recently?”

She shrugged, sniffing back tears. “Sorry, I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Eleanor, Eleanor Dunham. My husband passed away last summer. We've been together thirty-seven years, you see. And I've read every book on grief and mourning—advice manuals, poetry anthologies, novels. Nothing mends the lesions in my heart.” She glanced away, then sat straighter. “So I thought music. Maybe music because Verlyn was a devotee, you see. Oh, I went along with him to the Festival each year, but
he knew
the instruments, the forms. I just listened and caught the occasional sound—bird song here, a waterfall there. But on a simple level. This was my first festival without Verlyn, yet I had to come.”

He nodded, baffled about how to respond.

“And I guess I visited
your
studio today because … oh, I know you're meant to visit each studio and thank each composer. But your concert was the only one so far that
touched
me. And it all sounds so crazy now.” She put her delicate left hand to her pale lips. The diamond was small, elegantly set against the thin, gold wedding band.

“I've seen crazy,” Paul shook his head. “Believe me, that's not you.” He had no clue about the source of this kindness. He was not a kind or an unkind man.

“So,” she sat straighter, a woman practiced in good posture. “I needed to ask you that.”

“Ask me what?” Paul said. He
really was
tired. His lower back ached from standing and his brain was fried from conversing with strange visitors all day. In contrast, this woman seemed someone quite familiar.

“Do you ever write about grief?” She spoke slowly, fiercely.

“Oh, I don't know,” he muttered, humiliated by his insensitive forgetfulness. “I mean not consciously. But I'm not at my sharpest right now.”

“See, I knew I was imposing.” Eleanor stood, folding the strap of her purse over one arm and offering the other hand in adieu.

He took the hand and swung it gently. “If I promise to be more alert tomorrow, would you meet me for afternoon coffee?”

“Oh, I don't want to usurp your time,” she furrowed her pale brows. “You're here to write music.”

“I can't write a note after 4 or 4.30.” He hadn't meant it to sound like that—as if she were the filler in his day. See, he really was not a kind man. Muriel had told him that. “Indifferent,” she had complained. “So bloody indifferent.”

Eleanor smiled. “There's a nice little place, The Wisteria Street Cafe, next to the bookshop. I'd love to join you. Shall we say 5pm, so you don't feel rushed?”

“Five, yes, five,” he grinned. “I look forward to that!”

He watched her walk along the dirt road to the Festival entrance. She had the gait of an actor, maybe a yoga teacher.

Paul cleared his scores off the little studio bed, ready for a nap. Instead, he found himself at the piano, sketching out new ideas which came from somewhere.

Overnight, the weather turned warmer. He could almost see the tiny light green leaves sucking up chlorophyll, growing larger, darker. At first it was hard to stay inside, but he reminded himself, he
never
had uninterrupted work time, not even in the summer.

Inevitably Dean Wyckoff would call for a meeting or a retreat or, well, last summer it was that deadly pedagogy seminar led by Wyckoff's tedious grad school buddy from Oklahoma. What a waste of time. And a strain on his hard-won equanimity. It had been then, actually, that troubles with Miriam began.

Paul had said he needed
time
to compose, time to sit alone and watch the sun striping shadows on the grass through the front porch slats. He needed an escape from school and Muriel thought he was trying to escape her.

“Compose,” she'd said, “who's stopping you? But quit complaining.”

She liked nursing. She liked South Dakota. Maybe he was jealous of such satisfaction.

He feared losing his edge.

So strong was his craving for solitude, maybe he was trying to escape her.

This spring, he'd been able to say to Wyckoff, “Ciao, remember I have a Chester Fellowship.” Instead of being offended, the dean wrote a paragraph in the alumni newsletter about this distinguished honour bestowed on one of Clarkdale's most accomplished professors. Accomplished, Paul laughed with Marco over a beer the night before he left town. Wyckoff once asked him why he never wrote melodies you wanted to hum!

So he reminded himself, as he sat down at the piano this morning, he'd best make use of this residency. He worked through mid-day and he was fixing a late tuna sandwich in the little kitchenette—these studios were ingeniously built, larger than ships' cabins, but just as efficient—when he remembered the woman. Eleanor. Yes, Eleanor Dunham. It was three now. The walk to town was half-an-hour. That left only ninety minutes for work. Damn. Why had
he
suggested this? Paul gulped down the sandwich, yet never did retrieve his thread for the rest of the afternoon. He could pretend he had forgotten. Paul thought about her hands. And her question.
He
might not be a kind man, but he wasn't cruel. He had invited her to coffee.

Of course Paul was late leaving his studio, so he strode briskly downhill toward the picturesque village. Chester's side streets and alleys felt so charming after years exiled to shopping at the half-abandoned strip malls of Clarksdale. During his cloistered absence, the outside world had ripened. Pale hearts of lilacs had burst from dark buds, their syrupy scent mingling in the warm air with fragrances of petunias, late narcissus and lilies. In town, he passed the large white tent with its meringue-like peaks where his first concert had been performed and where he would have another concert during the final Festival week. First and last weeks— good slots. Maybe someone would notice the work, someone from a better school, from a bigger recording label, from the MacArthur Foundation. Old Wyckoff would write two paragraphs in the newsletter if he won a MacArthur.

The wood and brick Unitarian Church stood out handsomely on a central corner—so much more distinguished than Clarksdale's little Lutheran and Catholic and Pentecostal chapels. He passed the stationery store and was tempted to stop, recalling their excellent score sheets and the seductive smell of pencils. No, he checked his watch. It was 5pm already; in his rush he almost zipped by Wisteria Street.

Eleanor sat outside the coffee shop, in dappled light, reading a book and sipping from an overgrown tea cup. She looked so different from the formal matron he'd met the previous day. Her posture was still erect but she seemed less brittle in her jade blouse and flowered voile skirt. “
Voile
.” He'd learned the term from Muriel. Muriel loved the diaphanous feel of voile. He had loved the feel of Muriel and was momentarily engulfed with bewilderment about their break-up.

“Hi.” She waved.

He shook his head. “Sorry to be late, Eleanor. Time got away from me.”

“Yes, yes,” she laughed. “The muse doesn't wear a watch.”

Yesterday he hadn't noticed how green her eyes were. “Well, um,” he stuttered. “I'd better order coffee. Would you like a refill of—whatever that is?”

“
Chai,
” she answered. “I became addicted when we worked in Kenya. And now they're serving it at all the coffee shops here. But no thanks, I just started on this one.”

They talked through another chai and three house blends. He described some of his new pieces, reminisced about his best students. She told him about her years with UNICEF in Nairobi; her two children, born in Africa and now living in nearby Vermont towns; her current job as a consultant on children's health policy.

She was hardly the pitiable widow he'd imagined. But she was a widow. And sad.

Once more she posed her question.

“I don't know,” Paul was trembling now, from too much coffee. He thought he'd be able to handle it after that late lunch. “I think of the work as more
interesting
than
emotional
. I'm curious about how one instrument blends with or clashes with another. Why do you ask?”

“It's just how your work affected me. I heard sorrow, longing. But perhaps I imposed my own feelings. You don't work from emotion?”

“If anything, I'd say the music came from ‘ideas.' That old guy, with the cane, was close, the magistrate.”

“Avery,” she smiled again. She was smiling a lot this afternoon, no evening, already.

He'd better find an exit soon if he was going to get to the German composer's concert on time.

“Yes, Avery and Verlyn used to discuss music often. When they weren't practicing for chess tournaments.”

“Hi there, you two!”

They looked up.

The man wiped a blond curl from his eyes. “So you do escape the studio occasionally!”

Paul smiled vacantly. The guy was familiar.

“Well, hello, Thaddeus,” she said.

“Good evening, Mrs Dunham. How's Audrey?”

“Fine, fine, enjoying the new job.”

She turned to Paul. “Thaddeus went to school with my daughter. Now he teaches music at their alma mater.”

“Oh, right, Thaddeus. The Maestro. I remember you from the Open Studio.”

“And you still have my card?”

“Sure do, tacked up on the bulletin board.” Was there a bulletin board in the studio? He hoped so.

Silence fell among them.

“Nice to see you getting out, Mrs Dunham,” Thaddeus waved. “Catch you around, Paul.”

“Yeah, yeah, catch you around.”

She lowered her voice. “Thaddeus is a fine boy. He's always been a little
isolated
in the village.”

“Well, Verlyn sounds like a fascinating man,” Paul declared, glad to change the topic, but also genuinely interested in the chess master and music aficionado. “With his work in Africa, his cultural engagements.”

“Yes,” she dipped her head. “An extraordinary person. A loving, provocative husband for thirty-seven years. We shared two terrific children, lots of intellectual pursuits, political commitments. A passion for hiking.”

“Hiking?” She didn't look the type. Yet he'd been wrong about so much else.

“Oh, yes, we climbed Kilimanjaro—finally—it took several trips. And we went hiking here almost every spring and summer weekend.”

“That's the worst part about Clarksdale,” he shook his head. “It's utterly flat. OK, the prairie sunsets can be gorgeous. But I miss contour. So I go to the Black Hills every summer for several weeks of backpacking.”